TONY HAD GIVEN me all the passwords for Lisa’s credit and bank cards, at least the ones he had been paying for; I checked again after Richie and Kathryn and Richard left. There had been no activity on any of them.
If she’d run, she had put enough money away to keep her going. Maybe it meant she had been planning this for a while. There were still no clues in the bank or credit card statements that Tony had emailed to me indicating where she might be, nothing from New York or Los Angeles or London or Paris or Pawtucket, Rhode Island, or Portland, Maine. All of her recent purchases, from before she disappeared, had been from either Boston stores or online. Nothing from out of town.
I opened my laptop and looked for any references anywhere on the Internet to Lisa Morneau and found none. In all likelihood it wasn’t her real last name, but it was the only one I had. Tony said she’d come from Baltimore. Maybe she’d been using her current name there, and there was some kind of sheet on her. I called Darcy Gaines and asked if she’d mind calling the Baltimore cops and asking if Lisa Morneau was in their system.
“After I’m done, do you want me to wash your car?” she said.
It took her only fifteen minutes. She said Baltimore had nothing on anybody using that name. I thanked her, then said, “You come up with anything here?”
She said, “Not yet,” and told me she’d love to chat longer, but she had actual police work to do.
I looked down at Lisa’s picture, which I had set next to my laptop, almost as if hoping that she would say something to me.
Maybe if we had Callie Harden’s phone we could have checked her recent calls, but we didn’t. Maybe Lee would find something at Callie’s apartment that might point us in the right direction, even though Callie had sworn she didn’t know where Lisa was. He said he would call me when he was free. Maybe Callie had lied to me. Why not? Lisa was the one who had gotten her out of the life. Lisa was her friend.
But maybe not her only friend.
There could be someone else with whom Lisa had worked, and in whom she had confided. I called Tony and asked who was now running the house between Westland and Symphony Road. He gave me the name Olivia Hewitt.
I asked him how the place worked in the middle of the day.
“You’re asking me how a whorehouse works?” he said. “For real?”
“I’m just wondering how many of your employees and how many customers might be around right now,” I said.
“We operate on that early-arrival-and-late-checkout deal,” he said, and told me he’d tell them I was on my way.
“You could maybe pick up some spare change, you got a couple of hours free,” Tony said. “Work a couple of shifts. Might turn out you like it.”
“Too old,” I said.
“Some of the johns, they like a woman of a certain age,” he said.
Before I could reply he said, “Yeah, yeah, I know. Why don’t I just go fuck myself?”
I HAD TO buzz to get in. One of Tony’s guys opened the door for me, motioning me into a small foyer, which then opened to a larger area where a young black woman sat at a desk. Once, when this brownstone was likely a residence, this was probably the living room on the ground floor. Now it could have served as the reception area for a doctor’s office.
Best little whorehouse near Symphony Hall.
I was about to give my name to the young woman at the desk when a much older woman, not much more than five feet tall, came out of the office behind her. She was blond and pretty and even whiter than I was.
“Ms. Randall,” she said, putting out a hand that was much older than the face, which had had some work done to it. You could do something about faces. Never hands. “I’m Olivia Hewitt. So nice to meet you.”
I shook her hand and smiled as she waved me into her office.
“You’re not what I expected,” I said.
“And what did you expect?” she said. “Someone younger, or sluttier?”
“Withdraw the statement,” I said.
“Everyone in this profession is not the same,” Olivia Hewitt said. “Some of us evolve. I am not the girl I was on the streets of Boston, or the refined woman I like to think I became in New York.”
I told her that I would try not to be intrusive, or take up too much of her time. She said Tony had told her to give me all the time I needed, within reason. I asked how many women were on the premises at the present time. She said six, including Tonya, gesturing at the woman at the desk. She said that they ran both outcall and in-house services out of what she called “this facility.” She made it sound like a power plant.
“I’ve heard about, um, facilities like this,” I said. “Wasn’t there a suicide involving one of the madams several years ago?”
“Her name was April Kyle,” she said. “I’d actually worked with her in New York City, poor thing. She got herself in over her head.”
“Perhaps as Lisa Morneau has?”
Olivia Hewitt said, “You’d know that better than I.”
“From the outside,” I said, “this could be any residence on the street.”
She smiled. Her skin was so tight I wondered if she knew she was smiling.
“We do even better for some of our best and most generous customers,” she said. “It was actually Lisa’s idea. There are a few standalone apartments scattered here and there around the Back Bay, as well. One in The Fens. Another on Stanhope Street.”
Olivia Hewitt said she’d met Lisa when taking over for her. She said before that she’d done similar work for a woman named Patricia Utley in New York, with whom Tony had done business in the past, and that Patricia Utley had recommended her to Tony as someone who was ready to move up and into a management role.
“How many women working here now worked for Lisa?” I said.
“Off the top of my head,” she said, “I believe only Laura and Kourtney. With a K. But then ours is a profession where tenure is rarely a desired or stated goal. Perhaps I am one of the exceptions to that rule.”
I was starting to think her smile, once deployed, was then frozen in place. Or maybe just her whole face was. Hard to tell, even sitting this close to her.
“You do seem to have lasted,” I said.
“You find something you’re good at,” she said, “you stay with it.” She shrugged. “And it helps that I have a good woman in my life.”
“Behind every good woman,” I said.
“Exactly,” she said.
“Did you know a former employee here named Callie Harden?” I said. “Her stay here would have overlapped with Lisa’s.”
“No,” she said. “Should I have?”
“Somebody shot and killed her and dumped her body in a park in South Boston last evening,” I said.
“Good Lord,” Olivia Hewitt said. “Was her death work-related?”
“She’d retired,” I said. “Or so she told me.”
There was an iPhone in a pink case on the desk in front of her. I heard it buzz. She did not look down. Finally she said, “Is there something else I can help you with today, Ms. Randall?”
I asked if either Laura or Kourtney with a K were around and she said I was in luck. She called out to the receptionist and asked her to go upstairs and get Laura and Kourtney. Olivia Hewitt showed me into a small living room off the foyer. A couple minutes later two women walked into the room. One was blond with long, straight hair that immediately made me jealous. The other was taller, but with shorter black hair. What we’d once called a bob. Did they still call it that? Both were young. I had long since come to grips with the fact that meant they looked younger than me, I now being, as Tony Marcus had said, a woman of a certain age. Olivia Hewitt informed them I was a private detective working for Mr. Marcus and looking into the disappearance of Lisa Morneau.
The blonde was Laura. Without being asked, she volunteered that this wasn’t her full-time job. When I asked what was, she said, “Flight attendant.” The other woman was Kourtney. I asked if this was a moonlighting gig with her as well. She said yes, her own full-time job was as a Pilates instructor.
I asked what had brought them both here. Laura said, “The money’s good, my schedule is flexible, and I like sex.”
“Same!” Kourtney said, as if encouraging me on my core blasting.
Before Olivia Hewitt had left the room, she had informed me that both Laura and Kourtney had appointments scheduled within the next half-hour.
“Mani or pedi?” I’d said.
No one in the room, including Olivia Hewitt, showed any reaction. It was apparently a mirth-free zone.
Both of the women sitting across from me on a small sofa were wearing short dresses. Both had crossed their legs, as if on cue. They had very good legs. I was almost certain both were wearing Louboutins. Once a shoe girl, always a shoe girl. I wanted theirs.
Work clothes, I thought, for working girls. I idly wondered just how many of these places Tony Marcus really did have in Boston, and how many young women like these were waiting for appointments at this time of the day. Darcy Gaines had told me once that it was like Whac-A-Mole. Close one down, another opened up. It was why her focus these days was on minors. She knew she could never cut off the supply. But, she had told me once, she could sure as hell try to slow it down.
“I’m here to ask about Lisa Morneau,” I said. “But I was wondering if either one of you knew Callie Harden? She worked for Lisa here.”
Kourtney looked at Laura, then shook her head. Laura said, “I started here just as Callie started talking about leaving. I think it was about some guy. Do you know her?”
“Somebody shot her to death,” I said.
I knew they both had to be expert in faking just about every possible emotion. But their reaction to the news seemed authentic.
“Jesus,” Kourtney with a K said.
“Does it have something to do with Lisa?” Laura said.
“Unclear,” I said. “I just know that they were friends, and that Callie died not long after I had spoken to her about Lisa.”
Kourtney said, “Do you think Lisa might be dead, too?”
“Hoping that’s a hard no,” I said.
Laura looked down at the Apple watch on her wrist. All the modern accessories for a modern career woman. “We don’t have a lot of time,” she said. “But how can we help?”
“Did Lisa ever indicate that she might be ready to move on?” I said.
“Once in a while,” Laura said. “But every time she did, I thought she was joking. She was already sleeping with the boss. When we all heard that, we thought she had it made.”
“In the shade,” I said.
“Huh?” Kourtney said.
“An expression women of a certain age still use,” I said.
They looked at each other and shook their heads. “Why get out,” Laura said, “when you already had Tony in you?”
She giggled. So did Kourtney. Oh, sure, I thought. They thought that was funny.
Olivia Hewitt popped her head back into the room and said, “Tonya just received a couple of texts. Laura, your client will be here in a few minutes. Kourtney, yours is running a few minutes late but says he’s on his way.”
“Showtime,” Laura said.
I stood and gave each of them one of my cards, just as I had with Callie twenty-four hours ago. I told them to call if they remembered anything about Lisa or Callie that they thought might be useful.
I thanked Olivia Hewitt for her time. Tony’s guy wordlessly showed me out. On my way down the front walk, I passed a broad-shouldered guy in what looked to be an expensive topcoat heading for the same door from which I’d just left.
He nodded at me and smiled. I smiled back, then kept going. From behind me I heard him say, “Hey.”
I stopped and turned.
“You new?” he said.
“The opposite, actually,” I said, and kept walking.
Maybe I should have given him one of my cards, too.
When I got back home a black Navigator was parked where Lee Farrell had parked the night before. Gled, Gabriel Jabari’s man, got out on the driver’s side, came around, and opened the back door.
Jabari leaned out.
“Take a ride with me,” he said.